


and i might believe the things i said i didn't mean

by awkwardspiritanimals



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/M, marriage pact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22299010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardspiritanimals/pseuds/awkwardspiritanimals
Summary: “Hey,” she says, “I have an idea.”This is stupid, says the sober part of her brain.Or reckless. Or something. All of the above, really.“Yeah?” he responds, pressing the rim of his glass against his bottom lip for a moment before he drinks, and the sober part of her brain doesn’t really stand a chance, not when its stuttering over itself as much as any other part.“Maybe we should just get married.”(Rafael Barba and Olivia Benson get a little bit drunk and decide to get married if they're both single by her 49th birthday.As her 49th birthday actually approaches, both of them are trying to figure out exactly what to do about that.)
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Olivia Benson
Comments: 19
Kudos: 139
Collections: Hopes and Tropes





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I jokingly made [this tweet](https://twitter.com/awkspiritanimal/status/1161654982438993921) about a Barson marriage pact trope fic that I had a couple ideas for and wanted to write, and then a bunch of people volunteered to write it, [rellkelltn87](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rellkelltn87/pseuds/rellkelltn87/works) published hers within like two days of the original tweet, four other people have now published their versions, and I am just now, five months later, getting around to publishing the first part of my own version of a fic _that I prompted_. This did not happen with knights!au and I will never forgive any of you for that.
> 
> I am deeply aware that the jumping back and forth between times and perspectives feels choppy sometimes but uhhhhhhh I couldn't figure out how to fix it in a way that made me happy and also worked with the structure of the story.
> 
> Title from [We're On Our Way by Radical Face](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ4oLqbayqY), which is one of my all time favorite songs and makes me emotional about Liv and Rafa on a regular basis.

“So, forty-nine. Any big plans, Liv?”

Rafael tunes out of the conversation, despite the nagging feeling that there is something important about Olivia’s 49th birthday that he is just on the edge of remembering.

He’s sure Tucker has planned something nice, because it seems like the kind of thing Tucker would do, and he just… doesn’t particularly want to hear about it. They’re months removed from the St. Fabiola’s case and everything it had torn up between them, and he and Olivia have been back on solid ground for a while, but part of that solid ground is that they don’t talk about Tucker.

They had come to this decision without actually saying a single word about it between the two of them, and while he prefers that to any of the myriad awkward conversations he’s imagined they could have had to arrive at the same decision, none of it really sits quite right with him. Olivia being unwilling to talk to him about Tucker had been what had caused problems before.

Yes, he’d been upset that she was further complicating a case that had been a total mess from the moment it had started, and yes, more than anything else he’d been jealous as hell. But he’d been hurt too, hurt that she had felt like she couldn’t tell him when he thought they were friends, when he _knew_ they were friends and felt that they were finally getting past everything surrounding the Terrence Reynolds shooting. The fact that they apparently hadn’t told anyone else either wasn’t actually particularly comforting, no matter how much he tried to convince himself that it was.

So they don’t talk about Tucker, and Rafael is cordial to him on the rare occasions he runs into him at the precinct, and everything is fine. Everything is good. Except…

“Having second thoughts already, Barba?”

“What?” he asks, pulling himself out of his thoughts to find Olivia looking at him, half worried and half amused, and there it is again, the feeling that there is something vital that he cannot quite remember.

“Having second thoughts about being able to get us the warrant?” she asks, nodding at the folder in his hand, and he shakes his head, in response and in an attempt to realign his thoughts to the matter at hand.

“No, this should be fine. Sorry, I-” _Do you remember what it is? Would you tell me, if I asked? Do you think it’s important?_ “I’ll talk to Barth, should have what you need in a couple hours.”

“Thanks. Talk to you then.” Olivia turns back to her squad, and Rafael fights the urge to stare after her, heading towards the elevators.

Once inside, he tilts his head back against the wall, closing his eyes with a sigh. He concentrates on the tug in his gut, trying to nudge his brain into catching on to whatever it was about that particular sentence of Olivia’s that had almost jogged his memory.

_And what about you? Having second thoughts, Rafael?_

“Fuck,” he says with feeling as memories come flooding back, like tugging on that one string of familiarity had unraved everything else. All of a sudden, remembering Olivia’s breath against his cheek and her voice very, very close to his ear and the way his arm had fit around her shoulders, he’s not entirely sure that his knees aren’t going to give out. At least he’s alone, so he can lean more of his weight back against the elevator wall and concentrate on his breathing.

Figuring out what he’s going to do once the doors are open is another matter entirely.

\-------------

Barba settles onto the stool next to her, but she doesn’t bother looking at him. She doesn’t need to look to know it’s him, and if she was in a slightly different mood, she might dwell on that thought, that she is so aware of Barba, so familiar with the way he moves that she knows it’s him just from the feeling of him next to her.

But she isn’t in that mood, and all she wants to do in her actual mood is to drink this glass of wine and continue drinking glasses of wine until Tony stops bringing them to her. Then she’ll catch a cab home, hopefully just drunk enough that she can pass out in bed and sleep without any nightmares, and hopefully before Brian gets home from his shift so she has an excuse not to talk to him.

Right on cue, Barba asks, “You didn’t want to get home, after the week we’ve had?”

She wants to make a joke that wouldn’t really be a joke about how all their weeks are like this, but again, all her current mood allows for is wine. And because she’s already had a glass and a half on top of the exhaustion of week after week of _weeks they’ve had_ and the lingering horribleness of Lewis’s trial, of having everything she’d gone through splashed out into the open for everyone to stare at on top of having to think about it herself, she answers him more honestly than she otherwise might have.

“Brian has a late shift tonight, and I don’t want to go home to an empty apartment.”

She’s also just drunk-exhausted enough to let herself really simmer in her anger for a few moments about how fucking unfair the universe is being about this, that she can’t bear the thought of going back to an empty apartment without feeling like her heart is about to bust out of her chest, but she also dreads the next time Brian is home, because the next time she sees him they’re going to have to talk, and then she’ll be alone again, because she _wants_ and Brian doesn’t.

But none of that- _wanting_ or Brian or empty apartments- is on the list of things she is going to think about in her current mood. That list consists of wine and nothing else, so she finishes off her current glass and nods at Tony when he brings her another one, then glances sideways at the tumbler of scotch he leaves in front of Barba, even as she feels him settle more solidly onto his stool next to her.

He really needs to stop that, the whole moving in her general vicinity thing, because Barba and all the ways he has felt familiar to her practically since they met is also not on the list of things she is going to think about tonight, and certainly not the curiosity that sometimes tugs at the back of her mind about whether Rafael Barba _wants_ and her own thoughts on that particular subject.

“What are you doing?”

“Drinking with you, which by definition prevents you from having to drink alone. Although I hope you don’t expect me to catch up with you, I’ve got a meeting tomorrow morning that I’d rather not be hungover for.”

Olivia resents his mentioning tomorrow, which is also not on her list. “And if I want to drink alone?” She finally looks at him, just in time to catch the flash of hurt and guilt on his face, but then it’s gone and he just shrugs.

“Then I’ll sit here and drink alone, and you’ll sit there and drink alone, but at least we’ll be drinking alone together.”

Her own laugh surprises her, and if his smirk is anything to go by, he’s pretty pleased with himself about that. She wants to be annoyed again, but she can also see the way his shoulders drop just slightly as the last clinging bits of tension leave him and he fully relaxes next to her, taking a long drink from his scotch.

Olivia holds out her glass towards him, and it’s his turn to laugh as he clinks his against it.

“To drinking alone together, then.”

\---------------

“Momma!”

Olivia is pulled out of her thoughts by Noah’s voice, and by the gentle but insistent way he’s attempting to press another Lego block into her hand. She laughs, taking it from him and adding it to the misshapen creation they’ve been working on for the past half hour.

“Sorry, sweet boy, Momma was distracted.” Now that she’s paying attention again, Noah goes back to his own building efforts while she fiddles with the blocks in front of her.

She knows it’s ridiculous that she’s waiting for Rafael to bring it up when she could just as easily do it herself, especially because she isn’t even sure if he actually remembers. He hadn’t been quite as drunk as she had been-- _and neither of you was actually drunk enough to do this sort of thing_ , says a voice in her head that she has been choosing to ignore for the past month or so--, so she feels like it should be his responsibility to start the conversation. Which, again, is ridiculous, and she really thinks that the ridiculousness of the entire situation should make it easier to talk about.

_If it’s so ridiculous, then how come you still have the ring?_

She’d worn it home that night, and when she’d woken up the next morning, hungover and glad that Brian was still asleep for multiple reasons, she had stashed it in her bedside table. It would have been rude to get rid of it immediately, especially since it was, after all, the only engagement ring she’d ever actually received from someone who cared about her, plastic and garish as it was. And every time she’d opened the drawer and caught sight of it, stuck in a corner or trapped against the side by a book or a file, she’d tell herself that it was a gift from a friend and was thus to be treasured, even if all it really was was a cheap joke they’d made together after too many drinks.

Yesterday, after Ed had stopped by to pick up the last of his things, Olivia had sat on her bed for what must have been a half hour, turning the ring over between her fingers. When they’d bought the rings, her relationship with Brian had been crumbling because she wanted things he didn’t, and now she’s sitting in the ruins of another, despite that fact that she now has some of those things and Ed had seemed ready to offer her at least of few more of them.

Maybe she really was just fundamentally incapable of holding on to anything good when it came to her relationships.

Except for that ring, of course.

She knows she’s been using Ed as an excuse not to say anything, to let Rafael bring it up first. It had been a good excuse up until a week ago, because she didn’t think that it was fair to anyone involved to mention to the man she was in a good, solid, long-term relationship with that a few years ago she’d gotten drunk and made a sort of pact with her co-worker-best-friend-maybe-probably-something-more that if they were both single when she turned forty-nine, they’d get married. And that she’d kept the rinky-dink ring that he’d bought for her from the gashapon outside the bodega down the street from Forlini’s. And that since the last time she’d accidentally reminded herself about the ring, just after Christmas, pretty much all of her very sparse free moments of thought, between Noah and work and Ed, have been spent wondering if Rafael remembers, if he’s going to say anything, if she should say something herself and once again risk the balance that they’ve so recently returned to.

Olivia might genuinely wonder if it would be better for both of them to just leave it alone, except the thought of that sits heavily in her gut, sharp-edged and unpleasant, as intolerable an idea as getting rid of the ring for reasons she cannot quite articulate but feels very deeply rooted in her chest. As she watches Noah remove several pieces from his Lego sculpture so he can move them to other places, and absent-mindedly adds another piece herself, she steels herself into a decision, because she and Rafael are adults and they’re friends and not talking about things has only ever gotten them into bad spots.

Her birthday. It’s in a week, and that was the original deadline anyway, so if Rafael hasn’t said anything by then, she’ll bring it up, even if it’s just to make a joke in passing. She ignores the voice in her head that insists that just deciding to keep waiting isn’t actually a decision, and concentrates on helping Noah click a particularly stubborn block into place.

One week, and then she’ll know… well, at the very least she’ll know what to do with the ring.

\---------------

He’d been the one to suggest they move to a booth, because Olivia is steadily working her way through what he’s pretty sure is her fifth glass of wine and it had seemed prudent to move to more stable seating than the bar stools. He’s also now had two tumblers of scotch himself in about thirty minutes on top of an exhausting week-- month? year?--, and despite his joke to Olivia that he hopes she’s not expecting him to catch up with her, he appreciates the fact that he can sink back into the corner of his seat with his own drink now.

Plus, sitting across from her makes it easier to watch her without feeling creepy about darting his eyes over to check on her every few seconds. She’s watching a couple at the bar, two women smiling and flirting, leaning their shoulders against each other, and Rafael can see the rings on their fingers from here. Olivia sighs, staring down into her drink for a few seconds before draining half the glass in one go.

“Must be nice,” she says, glancing at him quickly before returning her gaze to the couple.

“Yeah,” he replies, although it’s more of a breath into the space between them than an actual word, because he suspects there is more she wants to say, and he wants to prompt her without scaring her off.

“To have someone like that, I mean. Someone who loves you and wants to make absolutely sure that the world knows that. Forsaking all others, and all that.”

“Yeah,” he repeats, and then, feeling like he’s stepping on uneven, unfamiliar ground in the dark, “Well, you have Cassidy, don’t you?”

“He’s… I don’t think…” She takes another drink, smaller but still substantial, “I don’t think Brian cares about getting married. And I know he doesn’t want-” She cuts herself off, but Rafael has a pretty good guess as to what she was going to say.

He takes his own drink before he responds. “And you do?” She stares at him blankly for a few seconds, and he berates himself for prying, for not just sitting here silently and drinking with her so she doesn’t have to be alone.

“My mother,” she starts, and he manages not to breathe an actual sigh of relief, “She was- I hardly ever knew what exactly would be waiting for me when I got home, growing up. And, I mean, you know what it’s like for kids who are in those sorts of situations. I spent a lot of time imagining what my life would be like once I was out of there, once I could make my own life, my own home, and one of the things I imagined was…” She trails off, and Rafael realizes there’s color high in her cheeks that he doesn’t think is from the wine.

“Spouse, two and a half kids, a dog, and a big house?”

Olivia laughs, nodding. “The whole package. And now I’m an adult, and some of those dreams came true and plenty of others didn’t. And I know, I _know,_ that there are infinite ways to make a home, to make a family, but… it’s hard, I guess, to just let go of something that you wanted so badly for so long. Even if it’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not. It’s- it’s normal,” he says quickly, and Olivia raises her eyebrows at him. “I just mean that everybody wants something. Someone.”

Her eyes are suddenly a lot clearer than they’d been a moment ago, and Rafael finishes his remaining drink in one go. Tony brings them each another one, but Olivia’s gaze doesn’t leave his face even as she thanks the bartender.

“And you, Barba?” she asks, once they’re alone again, “What do you want?”

He swallows hard, fighting the urge to break eye contact. “My mother wants grandchildren.”

“Is she hoping in vain?”

Even two drinks in, he considers his answer carefully. “Family and fatherhood is… complicated for me.” He traces his finger around the rim of his glass, fighting the urge to down the rest of it. “In a perfect world, I think I want those things.”

“And in this one?”

He smiles, hides the expression behind his drink. She never has let him get away with anything.

“In this one, it always seemed better not to really hope for something that seems unlikely to happen.”

Rafael isn’t nearly drunk enough to admit that, and if it was anyone else sitting across from him, he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t have. Olivia Benson seems to have that effect on him.

“And if something happened that made it more likely?”

He shrugs, figuring that there’s no point in trying to change the direction of the conversation now. “I guess I always assumed if something happened someday, then I could figure it all out. That I would know if it was right for me to be a husband.” He swallows hard. “For me to be a father.”

“Well,” she says, holding her glass out to him like she had earlier at the bar, “Here’s to someone and someday, I guess.”

\--------------

He leans against the doorframe of Olivia’s office, trying to look nonchalant. His hand is shoved into his pocket, and he twists the ring around between his fingers. If pressed, he’d say it’s more comforting than terrifying, something solid attached to the memory and their history to carry with him, but it wavers between the two.

Olivia smiles when she looks up and sees him, which settles his stomach a bit but kicks his heart into overdrive.

“Rafa, hey. Did you need something?” she asks, moving to sort through the pile of paperwork beside her, but he shakes his head.

“Actually I wanted to ask you something. Can I-?” He gestures at the door, and when Olivia nods he turns to close it, taking advantage of the few moments he has his back turned to her to take a deep breath.

“Something wrong?”

Rafael laughs as he sits in one of the chairs in front of her desk, hoping it covers his nervousness. “Always assuming the worst. Everything’s fine. I just wanted to ask you if you’d let me take you out to dinner. For your birthday. As a present.” She’s giving him a strange look, and he assumes it’s due to the awkward way he’d worded all of that before he realizes his mistake. “We can do it whenever you want. I’m sure Tucker has something planned for the actual evening, and I wouldn’t want to get in the wa-”

“We broke up. Tucker and I.” A pause. “I broke up with him.”

“Oh.” He isn’t sure what to say to that, because they don’t talk about Tucker. And because they don’t talk about Tucker, he has no idea if this is sudden or it had been coming for a while, what could have been the cause, if he’s supposed to comfort her or commiserate with her or just move past it without comment.

“It was last week. I just haven’t had a chance to tell you.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

She shrugs. “You’re my friend. You should know things about my life.”

“Right. I understand completely if you don’t feel like celebrating or anything.”

“No, no. Actually, dinner with my best friend sounds like the best birthday gift I could get.”

“Great,” he says, unable to help his smile, and it grows when she matches it, “Noah is welcome to come along, if you want. I’m sure we can find somewhere decent that serves a good steak and chicken nuggets and whatever you want.”

“Whatever I want, huh?” she asks, and Rafael presses the heel of his palm down against the shape of the ring in his pocket at the glint in her eye. “I’ll have to give that some thought.”

“You name it. Anything you want.” _Including my hand in marriage_ , he thinks, grinding his hand down against his thigh, relying on the slight ache there to keep him from saying that last bit out loud. Marriage pact or no, he can’t just _propose_ to her.

 _She did_.

He swallows against the thought. This isn’t the place or time to bring any of that up. When they go out to dinner, they can talk, and maybe he’ll show her the ring if it doesn’t feel like too much. Or if Noah comes along, they can have a nightcap once he’s in bed and they can talk about it or laugh about it or _something_. Away from their offices and their co-workers and all the accompanying associations.

“So dinner Monday?”

“If the stars and our caseload align.”

\---------------

Olivia scolds herself for watching his throat as he swallows his drink, but she’s pretty sure she’s already had at least a bottle’s worth of wine herself, and her reasons for not staring are very quickly losing the fight against the reasons she can’t seem to stop.

There’s the hollow of his throat, bared by his unbuttoned collar and loosened tie, and the lines of his forearms where he’s pushed his sleeves up to his elbows. His hair is even starting to lose its styling a bit, falling in a soft swoop across his forehead. She’s had to wrap both hands around her own glass several times just to keep herself from reaching out and brushing it back with her fingers.

It’s a lot to handle all at once, the swoopy hair and the length of his fingers wrapped around his glass and the emotional vulnerability.

“Hey,” she says, “I have an idea.”

 _This is stupid_ , says the sober part of her brain. _Or reckless. Or something. All of the above, really._

“Yeah?” he responds, pressing the rim of his glass against his bottom lip for a moment before he drinks, and the sober part of her brain doesn’t really stand a chance, not when its stuttering over itself as much as any other part.

“Maybe we should just get married.”

Barba chokes on his drink, and his coughing fit lasts so long that she shifts around the table to sit beside him in the booth so she can rub his back.

“Excuse me?” he asks once he’s finally got his breath back, staring at her with wide eyes, but she’s already too far in to let embarrassment stop her now.

“Not right now. Of course not. But what if we… what if we picked a date, sometime in the future, and if we’re both still single on that date, we’ll get married. To each other, I mean.”

“Why?”

She shrugs, reaching across the table to pull her drink towards her. “Because it’s exhausting, all of it. The looking and the waiting and the _wanting_. So what if we just decided that we’re friends and we want similar things and we-”

“Settled?”

“Does it really feel like settling?” she asks, raising her eyebrows, and he doesn’t seem to have an answer for that. “I think we’re just making a decision, about the things we want and how we can get them and-and… who we might like to spend the rest of our lives with. Plus, I think we see more of each other than any significant other would, and we work well together. If we got married, I could stop worrying about silly childhood wishes and you’ll get a chance to know what you really want.”

“And if… if I find out I only want some of those things?”

Another shrug. This isn’t about perfect matches or happy ever afters, it’s about compromises and making the best of something good and too much wine.

“Then we’ll both have at least some of the things we want, which is more than either of us has right now.”

He’s still staring at her in shock, and she drains her glass to keep herself from babbling more. She’s said her bit, and now it’s in his hands, so she’s just going to sit here and think about what a person does the next Monday at work when they’ve just proposed to their co-worker. It seems prudent to have a plan, since Barba can’t seem to shake the expression like she’d just slapped him, and-

“What’s the date?”

“Sorry?”

“You said we should pick a date. A deadline. Did you have one in mind?”

“Oh. No, not at all. That seemed like something we should probably decide… together.”

“Right. Together. Okay.” She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him this flustered, and she can’t help smiling a little. “What about your fiftieth birthday? What?” he asks, when her smile falls into a grimace.

“Nothing. It’s not important.”

“Hey,” Barba says, nudging her shoulder with his, “You have to talk to me or this marriage will never work.”

That startles a laugh out of her, and his answering smile is pleased. It’s a good look for him.

“It’s ridiculous. It’s just, if we’re picking a date, I think I’d prefer to be married before I’m 50. I know it’s arbitrary and ridiculous and-”

“It’s not. We’ll do your 49th birthday instead, if you want.”

“Yeah. That sounds… So if we’re both single when I turn 49-”

“-We’ll get married.” He sounds a little breathless, and his saying that probably shouldn’t make her heart beat so quickly.

“Well then, I think we need a drink to celebrate,” she says, catching Tony’s eye, and she can feel Barba laughing next to her.

\--------------

Lucy had dropped Noah off a few minutes ago, and Olivia had asked Rollins and Carisi to watch him while she finished a couple of things for the day. So she’s surprised when she walks into her office to find Rafael sitting on her coach, Noah perched on his lap and cheerfully coloring. Rafael has several crayons in one of his hands, and as she watches from the doorway, Noah hands him the one he’s using and grabs another one.

“I seem to have gotten a new babysitter,” she says, and both of them look up with a smile.

“Momma! Uncle Rafa color!”

“I see that, baby. Carisi and Rollins?”

“Witness came in about the Barnwell case. They’re with her in interrogation now, she wanted some privacy. I came up to drop some paperwork off and volunteered for babysitting duty so they could both talk to her.”

“Okay. Right.” She sighs, using one hand to push her hair away from her face, and Rafael laughs.

“Go, talk to her. I can watch mi amigo here for a little while. Right, Noah?”

“Rafa!” he repeats, grinning as he looks up from his coloring book, and Olivia returns to smile.

“Okay, sweet boy, you stay with your Uncle Rafa and Momma’ll be right back.”

The interview ends up taking the better part of an hour, and while Olivia appreciates the witness coming forward, she wishes it had happened a few hours ago. But everything is finished now, and she just needs to gather up her things before she can spend the entire evening at home with Noah.

Who is currently dozing against Rafael’s chest as he quietly reads him a book he has propped open against his leg. Rafael’s head is tipped back against the couch and he looks half-asleep himself, but he smiles softly at her when she sits next to him.

“He got bored with coloring, wanted a book. Wasn’t expecting him to want a nap too.”

“Well, he looks pretty comfortable. Plus you know how exhausting pre-school can be,” she says, and he laughs, “What’s your excuse?”

“The week we’ve had. The past two and a half months we’ve had, really.”

“Yeah,” she says, but she’s smiling a little as she tilts her head against the couch so they’re face-to-face, her son falling asleep on Rafael’s chest and one of his hands smoothing down Noah’s curls.

The past few months, since the beginning of the year really, cases have stacked up one right after another, and things have only really slowed down in the last couple of weeks. They haven’t even gotten a chance to go out for the dinner he’d promised for her birthday. They’ve been out plenty, of course, with the squad or Noah or just the two of them, for drinks and lunch and even a few dinners. Plus he’d spent a significant portion of his recent suspension in her apartment, cooking dinner and playing with Noah and reading on her coach late into the night.

But they’d seemed to agree, without ever actually talking about it, that this one particular dinner is special, and it wouldn’t really be _that dinner_ until they’d both agreed it was, until they had time to do it properly.

“Are you busy Friday night?” she asks, and his brow furrows.

“I don’t think so. Why? Something with the witness?”

“You still owe me dinner for my birthday,” Olivia says, and Rafael’s smile blooms into a full grin.

“I do. Friday night?”

“If you’re sure you’re free.”

“For this? Absolutely. He coming with us?” He nods down at Noah.

“Maybe just the two of us, this time?” She loves that he wants Noah to come with them, but the conversation she’s hoping to have seems like it’s going to be complicated enough as it is.

“Of course. We’ll bring him home some chicken nuggets.”

“Trying to buy his affection, Barba?”

“It’s worth every penny,” he says, and her heart thumps heavily in her chest, “So I’ll see you Friday night?”

“You want to come over for dinner tonight? It’s spaghetti night, and Noah’s gotten used to you being there. If you don’t show up, he’ll be disappointed.”

“Using your son to guilt me into coming to dinner, Lieutenant?”

“Worth it.” She can see the way his breath catches in his throat, the way his chest shakes with his exhale. “You coming?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

\--------------

The seat isn’t quite wide enough for two, and Rafael has stretched his arm across the back in an attempt to give them a little more room. He’s not sure at what point it had slipped down around Olivia’s shoulders, or when she had shifted to rest her head against his shoulder, but bringing it up seems like it would make things weird.

Not that things aren’t already weird. Or at least they should be weird.

 _We’re engaged_ , he keeps thinking, and then glancing down at the top of Olivia’s head to make sure he hadn’t said it out loud. He’s most of six drinks in now, because they’d decided that one drink wasn’t enough to celebrate their…

_We’re engaged._

It’s… a back-up plan, and one that seems unlikely to ever be necessary. After all, what are really the chances that Olivia won’t meet someone who wants the same things as she does? Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to give Olivia Benson everything she asked for and more?

And since it’s basically an impossibility anyway, there’s no harm in indulging, just for a little bit, just inside this small, warm bubble they’ve made.

“When we get married, do we have to move out to a big house in Connecticut?”

Olivia laughs. “No. We can find someplace nice in the city. Where they’ll let us have a dog. Or some cats, I guess.”

“Cats?” he asks, and she gives him a look like he’s not comprehending something simple. After a few seconds though, her expression melts into a smile, and she surprises him when she shifts to press a lingering kiss against his cheek. “What was that for?”

“Indulging me in my ridiculousness.”

“Ridiculousness? Don’t tell me you’re already backing out, Liv.”

She scoffs. “Oh please. I’d marry the hell out of you, Barba. And what about you? Having second thoughts, Rafael?”

“Of course not. I’d marry you right now.”

And that’s… too much, but Olivia just laughs, shifts to press herself more solidly against his side.

“You’re drunk.”

“So are you. And you’re considering about it.”

That gets him an indignant noise and a gentle elbow in his ribs. “I am not!”

“You are. Right at this moment, you’re thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, being married to me. That I’m smart and handsome and probably good with my-”

“There’s no good way for you to finish that sentence,” she says, but she’s still smiling, and he is too, grinning hard enough that his cheeks hurt. Rafael wants to blame the alcohol for how sentimental he’s feeling, but he knows it’s just her, and him, and this moment that he wants to grab in his hands and stretch it out as far as it’ll go.

“Oh! I know what we need.”

“If you say another drink, I’m leaving,” he groans, shifting next to her without actually moving away from her at all.

“No, no.” He’d unbuttoned his vest earlier, sometime between drinks three and four, he thinks, and Olivia slips a hand under it now to grab onto his suspender. Rafael tells himself that he’s imagining the heat of her fingers through his shirt. “We need rings.”

“We’re not engaged,” he says, then carefully reviews what he’d said to make sure there were three words there instead of two. “We’re- We have a pact.”

“Then we need something to commemorate it. Come on,” she responds, tugging first on his suspender and then his hand. “Come on.”

“Liv, it’s-” He glances at his watch- “10:37. Where are we going to find rings?”

“Come on.”

She pulls him out of the bar and down to the bodega on the corner, and he laughs as she crouches down, slightly unsteadily, in front of the row of gashapon machines beside the door.

“I’m a little insulted. There’s no way that’s worth three months of your salary.”

“Obviously you’ve never seen an NYPD paystub. Do you have any quarters?”

“No, I’m an adult.”

Olivia rolls her eyes, and then has to catch herself as she loses her balance. “We need quarters,” she says, once the dizziness has passed, and she gives him a pointed look until he turns back towards Forlini’s with a sigh.

It takes her a couple of tries to get the quarters into the slots once he brings them back to her, but eventually she stands up holding two capsules. After studying them for a few moments, she presses one into his hand, and he laughs when he pops it open to reveal a leopard print plastic ring. The one Olivia pulls out of hers is bright orange and striped.

“It really compliments your eyes,” he jokes, in an attempt to ease the sudden tightness in his throat.

The rings are children’s toys and there’s no way they’ll fit either of them, which is what Rafael tells himself as he lifts his left hand when Olivia reaches out for it, what he keeps telling himself even as she slides the ring into place on the ring finger of his left hand, as the warmth of her fingers catches his breath in his chest as he returns the favor.

“Well, then,” she says, gaze jumping between the two rings and his face, and if he didn’t know better he’d say there was something almost awed in her expression. He has no idea what his own might look like right now.

“Until your forty-ninth birthday do we part, I suppose,” he says.

Olivia leans in to press another kiss against his cheek, and he can feel her smile against his skin. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very much hope you enjoyed this first bit, and the second bit will hopefully be up in the next couple weeks!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feels like I should clarify something, since Rafael says or thinks several times that he wouldn't forget the pact, despite the fact that the fic starts with him literally trying to remember something. He never forgot the pact itself, only the specific deadline.

Olivia smooths her hands over her dress with a deep breath, firmly telling herself that she isn’t overdressed.

No, it isn’t really something she would normally wear out to dinner with a friend, but this isn’t  _ just  _ dinner with a friend, not really. And maybe a dress like this could act as the push they need to actually talk about the pact, and everything else too.

Plus, it’s Barba. Chances of her being overdressed are low.

As usual, Rafael’s knock is right on time, and Olivia smooths her dress one more time before she goes to answer it. His mouth is already open, a smart remark prepared she’s sure, but whatever it is never actually makes it out of his mouth. He just stands there blinking at her, and she can’t help her smirk, even as her heart trips over itself at Rafael Barba, speechless. It’s only for a few seconds before he visibly shakes himself out of it, but that’s plenty for a reaction she couldn’t quite admit she was hoping for when she chose this particular dress.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” The dark suit underneath his coat isn’t one that she’s seen him wear in court, and the sight makes her stomach flutter. She can’t help wondering if he was hoping for a reaction of his own. “You want to come in for a few minutes?”

“Sure.” His brow furrows as he glances around the living room. “Noah already in bed?”

“No, Lucy’s taking him to a movie.” She picks up her coat, letting him help her into it, indulging a little in a way she normally wouldn’t allow herself. “I figured if I was having a night out, he should have one too.”

“Sounds fair,” he says with a grin, and Olivia is tempted to point out that they’re alone in her apartment, which isn’t a common occurrence. Maybe it would be easier to talk sitting together on her couch than across a table in a crowded restaurant, and she swallows hard at the sudden memory of his arm around her shoulders, his thigh pressed all along hers. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah, just let me grab my purse,” she says, thankful for a few moments to shake herself back to reality. He holds open the door of her apartment for her, even though she has to lock it behind them, and he does the same with the building door. She rolls her eyes at him, settling gladly into the  _ them _ of the moment, and even if they don’t talk, if neither of them manage to work up the courage to bring their pact up, maybe this will be enough, the two of them, here, together, nowhere they’d rather be.

“So where are we headed?” she asks once they reach the sidewalk.

“We’re celebrating your birthday, it’s your pick. Whatever you want, remember?”

“My birthday was two months ago, can we really still say we’re celebrating that?”

“Absolutely. Two months is nothing. There’s even still plenty of time to get married before your fiftieth birthday.”

Olivia stops abruptly, and she has about two seconds to wonder if he’d said it purposefully before she watches all the color drain from his face as he turns back towards her. She fumbles for a second with what to say but decides that the truth is probably a good place to start.

“I didn’t know if you remembered.”

“Of course I do,” he says, like he can’t quite catch his breath, the same way he’d sounded when he’d said  _ we’ll get married  _ that night, and the dissonance of it, the memory of him disheveled, tucked into the corner of their booth and the perfectly put together him standing in front of her on the sidewalk, steals her own breath.

Part of her wants to correct it, to drag him back to her apartment and take him apart a little, run her fingers through his hair and twist open the buttons on his vest, get her hands on his suspenders again. Take them back to that moment where all of this meant  _ something _ but certainly not so much, where they could just go back to work in a few days like nothing potentially life-altering had happened.

But mostly she wants to be right here, with a Rafael who says  _ of course I do _ like it had never occurred to him to forget.

Although she does still want to grab onto his suspenders and not let go.

“When you brought up dinner for my birthday, I thought you might… but then we never got a chance to go, and I thought that it was a coincidence, or wishful thinking.”

“No, just busy schedules.” He smiles. “It felt like something that deserved to be remarked upon. Something to be celebrated.”

“Celebrated, huh?”

“Even if we’re a few months late.”

“Better late than never.”

His grin grows to match hers, and the tension drains from her shoulders for what feels like the first time in months. There are still so many things she wants to say, but the urgency settles some, because of course she’ll get a chance to say them, of course they’ll get a chance to talk, of course this all matters to him. Two sentences from him, one accidental and one breathless, shouldn’t have that much of an effect that quickly, but it does, because it’s Rafael.

She slips her arm through his, tucking herself against his side.

“Come on then. I’ve been waiting two months for this.”

\--------------

Olivia’s hand keeps brushing against his.

They’re walking-- wandering, really, since neither of them has said anything about where they’re going--, and he’d been hoping she’d take his arm again. Instead, she’s walking close enough that the knuckles of her left hand keep brushing against the knuckles of his right, and he’s finding it more and more difficult not to catch her fingers with his and intertwine them.

Dinner had been good. Nice. He keeps trying to think of something more effusive, but nothing fits better than that. They’d talked about work less than they normally would have and they’d flirted more openly than he’s sure they ever have, but other than that, everything had been normal, and nice, and good, and not at all like the ground was shifting out from under his feet and he wasn’t sure how to stop it, which he’d been afraid of in the immediate aftermath of his earlier confession.

He hadn’t meant to bring it up like that, but his hopes and Olivia’s dress had gotten out in front of his head, and there was no way he could not say the second thing after he’d stumbled into the first. There was so much they’d left unsaid between them in the years they’d known each other, there is still so much unsaid, but he couldn’t bear her doubting him, not in this.

They round a corner and it happens again, except this time Olivia huffs and grabs his hand. Her grip is too tight at first, like she’s afraid he’s going to pull away, but after a few seconds she relaxes a little and slides her fingers between his. Rafael wonders if she can feel how hard his heart is suddenly pounding from the pulse at his wrist, now pressed against hers.

“Sorry,” she says, but she’s smiling, “But I thought if I waited for you to do it, we might never get around to it.”

“Hey,” he responds, but his offense is all false, joy and courage welling in his chest, “I was the one who asked you out.” Her hand tightens around his at his phrasing, and he squeezes back.

“I guess you should get credit for that. But that still leaves us at one to one.”

_ How many points would I get for asking if I could kiss you? _ He almost asks, but stops himself. He wants to kiss her so badly that he feels like it might double him over like a blow to the solar plexus if he’s not careful, but before he kisses her he wants her to understand all of it, wants the chance to finally talk to her about the things they have very carefully not talked about, doesn’t want to leave any room at all for misunderstandings or even incomplete understandings. For the first time since they’d left the restaurant, he moves with a destination in mind.

“Where are we going?” Olivia asks, because of course she catches on immediately, and he grins at her.

“Your place.” Rafael realizes after a second how that might sound, except her reaction isn’t anything like he might have thought if she was assuming that he was making assumptions; she goes white, and her hand tightens around his almost painfully, like once again she’s afraid he’s going to pull away, and after a few seconds another realization hits him.

Olivia thinks she might have scared him off, that she’d crossed some line that he wasn’t willing to follow her across and he’s calling an end to things before they can say or do anything they might regret. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and Rafael wants to reach out, catch her face in his hands and press his forehead against hers and share her space, her air. But he can’t bear to let go of her hand, any more than he can bear her doubting him, so he flexes his fingers to get her to relax hers, then squeezes her hand, not as tightly as she had his but firm and sure.

“I don’t want you to miss Noah’s bedtime, and I thought maybe he’d let me read him a story. And then we could have a drink and talk.”

Her shoulders shake as she exhales, but she’s smiling again, and he is still holding on to her hand.

He only lets go once they’ve reached her apartment and Noah comes toddling across the floor towards him from where he’s sitting on the couch with Lucy.

“Rafa!” he says, and Rafael lets go of Olivia’s hand so he can bend down and pick up her son.

“Hey, buddy.”

“Play?” He twists in Rafael’s arms towards his toybox, and Rafael adjusts his hold with a laugh.

“Not tonight, it’s bedtime.” He glances over his shoulder at where Olivia is hanging up her coat and decides to take a chance. “But your mom said that you guys are going to the park tomorrow, maybe I could come with you?”

“Momma!” Noah twists again so that he can look at his mother, “Rafa park?”

“Yeah, sweet boy, Uncle Rafa can come to the park with us. But you have to go to sleep first, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, resting his head on Rafael’s shoulder, “Rafa story?”

“Of course, let’s go pick one out, and then your mom can tuck you in.”

Rafael carries him into his room while Olivia stays to talk to Lucy. About halfway through the book, she comes in and sits at the foot of Noah’s bed, listening to him read for a few minutes before she tucks the covers up around Noah’s shoulders and kisses his forehead. When he emerges, after promising Noah again that he’ll come to the park tomorrow, there’s a tumbler of scotch sitting on the kitchen counter and Olivia is standing in the living room with a glass of wine that she doesn’t seem to be drinking.

“Something up with Lucy?” he asks, and she shakes her head, brow furrowed.

“No. Why?”

“You look worried.”

She stares down at her wine glass, turning it slowly in her hand. “Did you only ask me out because of the pact?”

She’s not really looking at him, and he doesn’t know what he should say, what she wants to hear from him. Of course he should just tell her the truth, but the truth has a lot of parts, not all of which answer that question in the same way, and he’s desperate not to mess this up. She had seemed happy that he’d remembered earlier, and when he’d made his intentions in asking her to dinner clear, but maybe in thinking about it she’d realized that she would rather the two weren’t connected.

The distance between the two of them, him standing by her kitchen counter and her standing just past her couch, suddenly seems somehow long and deep, and he wishes he was still holding her hand.

“I wanted to do something nice for my friend. Maybe it was just a dumb joke, but it seemed like something worth remembering, and remembering together.”

All of that is true, and none of it comes out sounding right. If Olivia’s grimace is anything to go by, she thinks the same thing, and God, how had he managed to screw this up so quickly?

“You think it was dumb?”

That wasn’t the response he was expecting, but at least she’s looking at him now.

“I-”

Of course it was. It had been two friends trying to comfort each other about things named and unnamed that they would never be able to actually fix. They’d been drunk. They’d spent years not so much as mentioning it in passing to each other. It had been dumb and impulsive and ridiculous and-

“I kept the ring.”

She’d been staring at her wine again, but her chin comes up sharply at his words. “What?”

“I kept the ring.” He reaches into his pocket with trembling fingers and pulls it out. “In the dish on my dresser where I keep things that are important but I’m not sure what exactly I should do with them.”

It hasn’t actually been there in months, because he’s been carrying it around with him, transferring it from one pocket to the next, from suits to jeans to the comfortable sweatpants he wears when he actually gets home early enough in the evening to have time to just relax. It’d become part of his routine when he left his apartment: phone, wallet, keys, briefcase, ring.

Olivia is smiling again, and the distance between them feels breathtakingly manageable once more.

“You kept the ring.”

“I did.”

“We said that if neither of us were married by my 49th birthday, we’d get married.”

“We did.”

She laughs, bewildered and full of joy, and the sound nearly stops his heart. “We can’t actually get married.”

As recently as a minute ago, that sentence would have dropped his stomach into his shoes, but he can’t feel anything but hopeful and deeply fond and overwhelmed by her in the best way possible.

“Of course not. That would be-”

“Dumb?” She takes a step towards him.

“Ridiculous.” He matches her step.

“Exactly. I have a kid. I can’t just get married.” Another grimace, although this one is much softer and quicker than the one before. “And I… I was in a long-term relationship with someone a few months ago. I can’t just marry someone else. Even if it’s you.”

That last bit soothes any sting over the mention of Tucker, and he falls easily into the rhythm of her teasing as her smile returns. “Plus we’re both staid and responsible adults.”

“And you say things like  _ staid _ in actual sentences.”

They’ve both taken steps forward again.

“So we’re not going to get married,” she says, and he shakes his head, even as he takes another step forward. If they both reached out, they’re close enough now that they could tangle their fingers together again.

“No. Except…”

“What?”

“It feels a little unfair just to list the arguments against it, without seeing what there is in favor of the idea. There’s no balance.”

“We wouldn’t want to be unbalanced.”

“And since we’ve already listed the cons, I suppose that just leaves the pros.”

“Right. Well, we did promise.”

“Breaking a promise to each other would be a pretty bad place to start a marriage.”

“Exactly,” she says, moving away from him to put her still full glass down on the coffee table, and when she steps back towards him she ends up closer than before, “My kid adores you. Noah would be over the moon to have you around more.”

He hopes how baffled and overjoyed he is by that shows clearly on his face, because he can’t think of anything adequate to say in response.

“We work well together. We’re a good team.”

“The best.”

“And people always say you should marry your best friend.”

“Do they?” Olivia asks, eyebrows raised, and Rafael shrugs.

“I don’t know. But Rita’s father used to tell me that all the time, and her parents were married for about sixty years, so I’ve always assumed he was on to something.”

“Sounds like it. Rafa,” she says, her voice going soft on the nickname, and they’re close enough now that he could reach out and take her hand, could tilt his head and rest his forehead against hers without any trouble.

“Liv, as long as we’re making lists… Whether this is a pro or a con is up to you, I guess.” He feels clumsy, horrifyingly inarticulate in the face of how important this is, but. No more doubts. “I love you. I’m in love with you, and it feels like that should weigh in the balance one way or the other.”

He manages to keep looking at her until he finishes, and then his mettle fails and he glances down at the ring he’s still holding. After a few moments, her fingers wrap around his.

“Really trying to tilt things towards the pros column here.” He looks up to find her still grinning at him, the edges soft and bright. “So that’s two things in favor. And you kept the ring.”

“I did. Two?” She nods. “That means the in favor list is longer.”

“It does.”

She tightens her grip on his fingers, stepping away from him but tugging him after her, and his heart trips up into his throat when he realizes she’s headed toward her bedroom. He sits on the edge of the bed when she nudges him in that direction, watching as she searches for something in her bedside table. When she turns to him holding up the leopard print ring, he lets her press it into his palm and hands over his own.

“May I?” he asks, voice rough, and if he doesn’t get to kiss her soon he thinks his chest is going to cave in. She holds out her hand and he slides the ring onto her finger, spreading his legs so that she can step between his knees. As she slides his own bright orange ring into place, Olivia intertwines their fingers and lifts her left hand the cup his jaw.

“Even back then, I trusted you, you know?” Rafael can’t suppress a full body shudder when she brushes her thumb across his bottom lip. “We hadn’t even really known each other that long, but I still knew that I could do something impulsive and vulnerable and dumb, and because it was you, no matter what happened, it would be alright.”

“That sounds like a pro,” he says, resting his hands on her hips.

“It does.”

“But we’re not getting married.” Olivia shakes her head. “But we are-”

Nodding, Olivia cuts him off with a kiss.

\----------------

“Liv?”

“Hmm?”

She stretches, settling more heavily back against the warm, solid shape of him behind her. He’s got one arm wrapped around her, and Olivia traces the shape of his ring with her thumb.

“You know I’m all-in, right? That there’s nothing about this-- us-- that I don’t want?”

He sounds so serious that even as comfortable as she is, she turns in his embrace. She can’t help smiling at how earnest he looks, and reaches out to smooth the worry away from the corner of his lips with her thumb.

“I know, Rafa. I’ve known for a while.”

“We just left so much unspoken for so long, I don’t want you to think that you and Noah are anything less than everything I want.”

“I know,” she repeats, grinning, “Even if it means moving to a house in Connecticut and getting a dog?”

“We can buy a house on the moon and fill it with ferrets for all I care, as long as I get to come home to you guys at the end of the day.”

“We’ll compromise,” she says, tracing the curve of his ear with the tips of her fingers, “A cat. Two cats. A place big enough for all three of us. Or five of us, I guess.”

Rafael nods as she talks, but he still looks so serious, so intent on making sure she knows how he feels, and she’s overcome by her affection for him, shifts so she can press her body more fully against his and kiss him. If she wasn’t so tired and comfortable, she’d be tempted to slip her hands underneath the waistband of the sweatpants he’d borrowed. But for now she’s content to slide her fingers through his hair and along the line of his jaw, to sweep her palms down the solid plane of his chest and tangle her legs with his.

“I love you,” she whispers as he ducks his head to nuzzle into the hollow of her throat, and she can feel the tension leave him finally, can feel his shoulders relax under her hands.

“I love you too,” he says, shifting to kiss her again, and she’s pretty sure she could spend the rest of her life doing this, exactly this and also anything else, as long as Rafael is beside her.

\-----------------

Rafael looks up at the knock on the door, adjusting his tie.

“You can come in, Rita, I’m almost ready.”

“It’s me.”

“Liv?” He crosses the room so he can lean his shoulder against the door. “Is something wrong?”

“No, I just need to talk to you.”

The door handle starts to turn and, panicking, he leans more of his weight against it.

“We can’t.”

“What?”

“We can’t. We’re not supposed to see each other.”

Olivia laughs. “Barba, there’s no way you’re going to convince me you actually believe that.”

“I might not, but my mother does, and if she catches us, bad luck will be the least of our worries.”

“Rafa,” she says, and he can practically hear her rolling her eyes as she tries the handle again, “I need to talk to you, and I’m not going to do it through the door.” A beat of silence. “Close your eyes.”

“What?”

“You close your eyes, and I’ll close mine. That way we can talk but we won’t see each other.”

“That’s a very literal interpretation of the rule, and I’m not sure that it-”

“If you don’t close your eyes and open this door, I’m going to break it down.”

“Alright, alright,” he says, finally stepping away from the door. Once he has a hold on the handle, he closes his eyes. “You ready?”

“Go ahead.”

It takes them a few seconds to fumble towards each other, but once he’s sure she’s safely inside the room he shuts the door behind her. He can very clearly see her smirk, even with his eyes closed.

“Making sure we don’t get caught?”

“I wasn’t kidding about my mother. What did we need to talk about?”

“Come here,” she says, and there’s more fumbling until she manages to find his hand and press two small, round shapes into his palm. It only takes him a second or so to realize what they are.

“Oh.”

“I know we’re going to have real rings soon, but I couldn’t imagine doing this without those. And my dress doesn’t have pockets.”

“Real lack of foresight on your part, Captain,” he says, but he closes his hand around the plastic rings and slips them into his pocket, “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Olivia responds, and then her hand is at his chest, his shoulder, his neck, cupping his cheek to pull in him in to kiss her. He lets himself be tugged easily, reaching out to rest a hand at her waist, careful about grasping too hard and wrinkling her dress.

After a few minutes, Olivia laughs against his mouth, pulling away only long enough to say, “We’re definitely going to get caught,” before kissing him again.

“Absolutely.”

“We’ll just have to make our own luck then.”

“I think we’ll manage. We’re getting married.”

“We’re getting married,” Olivia repeats, and, giddy, Rafael wraps his arms around her waist to pull her to him, perfectly content to stay right here until the ceremony, unconcerned with everything and everyone else.

After all, they’re getting married.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope everybody enjoyed this second bit, and I would again like to say what a huge fan I am of the fact that I made two (2) tweets and got six fics out of them, only one of which I actually had to write.
> 
> I can be found elsewhere at [@awkspiritanimal](twitter.com/awkspiritanimal) and at [tumblr.](awkwardspiritanimals.tumblr.com)


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